


Hate Will Not Be Tolerated

by BootsnBlossoms



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: BAMF Stiles, Established Relationship, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2013-11-23
Packaged: 2018-01-02 10:08:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BootsnBlossoms/pseuds/BootsnBlossoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Mages and werewolves having a relationship is generally frowned on, you know?”</p><p>“Yeah. So?”</p><p>“A mage and a were in a relationship is good ammunition for trying to undermine a pack’s authority. A mage and a were in a <i>gay</i> relationship?”</p><p>Derek stiffened.</p><p>“Exactly,” Stiles muttered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hate Will Not Be Tolerated

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cleo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cleo/gifts).



“What the hell were you thinking?!” Scott shouted, eyes rimmed red with the force of his distress.

“Scott…” Stiles started with a sigh, shifting on the uncomfortable hospital bed. He looked pleadingly at Derek, who was leaning nonchalantly against the cold brick of the hospital wall, but Derek didn’t move. Frowning, Stiles gave Scott an exaggerated wince as he shuffled against the pillows in the hope that it would score him some sympathy points. Apparently even the evidence of Stiles’ pain, however, wasn’t enough to deter Scott’s rant.

“He’s twice as old and twice as experienced as you! He could have torn you apart, treaty or no treaty, and there wouldn’t have been a damn thing I could do about it without starting a war.”

“But he didn’t, Scott!” Stiles interrupted, finally giving in to his own irritation. “What the hell do you think we were doing out there? Dancing? He threw everything he had at me, and, if you’ll notice, all my limbs are all still safely attached!”

“Do you even know what you looked like when Derek and I got there?” Scott asked in only a marginally quieter voice.

 _Low blow_ , Stiles thought bitterly as he watched Derek shift uncomfortably against the well.

“We couldn’t touch you through the electricity that was still sparking all over your body,” Scott said, and his expression melted into something dark and fearful. “We couldn’t hear your heartbeat. We couldn’t check your pulse.”

“What do you want me to say?” Stiles closed his eyes and shook his head, feeling sparks of static running from the pillow to his head. “That I’m sorry? I’m not sorry Scott. I’d do it again. I  _will_  do it again, if the next pack that comes traipsing through in order to ‘pay their respects’ has a jackass for a mage, too.”

Scott’s eyes flashed red again and he opened his mouth to presumably shout more, but he was derailed by Derek’s hand on his shoulder.

Scott deflated almost immediately and Stiles resisted the urge to punch the air in triumph. Derek and Cora’s return to Beacon Hills had been utterly without fanfare, and their assimilation into Scott’s pack as betas had been just as quiet. It had completely changed their dynamic, and Derek’s contentment in his role had surprised them all. As such, whenever Derek had something to say — advice to give — Scott tended to listen.

Right now, Scott looked like he was torn between either taking the hint or staying to yell at Stiles some more. But, after a moment, he just shrugged and turned to grab his jacket off the back of the obnoxiously blue hospital chair. “We still need to talk about this, Stiles,” Scott said as he shrugged on the hoodie and zipped it up. “But later. When you’re feeling better.”

“Right. I’m sure that’ll be  _awesome_ ,” Stiles snarked. Then, at Derek’s glare, he smiled contritely. “Sorry for worrying you, buddy.”

Scott’s snort said he didn’t entirely believe Stiles, but he patted his friends’ leg and left anyway.

“All right, Derek,” Stiles said with a resigned sigh as soon as the door closed behind Scott. “Your turn. Fire away. Tell me how stupid and reckless I was. How much of an idiot I can be. Come on. Now’s as good a time as any.” He leaned back into the pillows and closed his eyes, preparing for the onslaught.

But, much to his surprise, Derek didn’t immediately say anything. After a few moments’ silence, Stiles heard only the rustling of fabric that meant that Derek was moving, but no words followed. Then his eyes flew open as he felt himself being pushed and prodded as Derek manipulated Stiles’ smaller frame into taking up less than half of the tiny hospital bed.

“Derek?”

Derek didn’t answer. He kicked his boots off then carefully slid into the newly empty space behind Stiles. Stiles felt his eyes grow heavy with a sudden lessening of pain, and he looked down to see Derek’s arm wrapped around his stomach, veins going black as they leeched the hurt from Stiles’ body. “Oh my _god_ ,” Stiles whispered, letting his eyes fall closed again as he snuggled back into Derek. “Thank you.”

Derek huffed hot air against Stiles’ nape, then kissed his knobby vertebrae lightly. “Go to sleep, Stiles.”

“Can’t,” Stiles objected, floating in that pleasant space between daydreaming and the timelessness of exhaustion that couldn’t actually end in unconsciousness. “That last spell Joey cast on me sped up my neuro network enough that sleep will be literally impossible for at least a day or two.”

Derek hummed in acknowledgement, then rubbed his nose against Stiles’ neck in sympathy.

“And, by the way? What kind of fifty-something year old man, bald and fingertips black from too much magic, still calls himself Joey, anyway? I mean, seriously. Seems like he should have had the common sense to give himself a more powerful, respect-inducing name, you know? Like… uh… Gwydion. Or Anders. Or something. Even _Catweazle_ is better than Joey.”

“Catweazle?”

“Jesus, Derek,” Stiles said with a sigh, rubbing his thumb over Derek’s arm. “When we get home, we’re having a marathon. All twenty-six episodes in one screening. With caramel corn and rum and us naked under a blanket.”

“Sounds good to me.”

 _Well, shit_ , Stiles thought. He pressed back into Derek just a little harder and pulled his arm a little tighter. If Derek wasn’t arguing, wasn’t making smart-ass comments about Stiles’ taste in television, wasn’t making snarky cracks about Stiles’ ability to handle his liquor, he must have been well and truly scared for Stiles’ well-being.  

He lifted Derek’s free hand, the one not drawing pain, and kissed his knuckles. He didn’t say  _I’m sorry_ , because he wasn’t. But for now, this was good enough.

 

~~~

 

“Son?”

Stiles blinked himself back from barely-there consciousness and pushed away visions of stars and auras and the vibrations of energies across worlds that he could almost taste. Magic was hard to control when one was at one’s best… this odd state of dreaming while awake seemed to be allowing him to fall down the rabbit hole.

“Thanks, Dad,” he mumbled, squinting in the early morning light to see his father dressed and ready for work. Judging by the tired lines under his eyes, the sheriff was on his way home rather than on his way in. Stiles smiled blearily. “You just saved me from following a wormhole to a parallel universe,” he muttered. “Once where Derek smiles all the time and knows how to salsa-shake his hips.”

His dad’s eyebrows rose as his gaze flickered to the gruff werewolf currently sound asleep curled behind Stiles. “Uh huh. What do they have you on, Stiles?”

Stiles laughed, low and quiet. “I’m high on the energies of the universes.”

“Right.” Stiles’ dad shifted in the uncomfortable hospital chair and frowned at his son. “They wouldn’t let me keep Joey in lockup. His pack came to collect him with the reasonable argument that you didn’t have any of the physical marks of someone who had been assaulted, so I had no grounds to hold him.”

Stiles smirked. “It’s all right, Dad. I bound that arrogant little fucker. He’ll be lucky to light a birthday candle without a match in the future.”

“Really? That sounds…”

“Brutal? Fantastic? Viscious? Perfect?”

The sheriff sighed. “Yes.”

Stiles hummed in satisfaction and closed his eyes before opening them to grin, perhaps manically, at his father. “He deserved it. Bigots shouldn’t have power.”

“Oh.” The sheriff’s eyes flicked to Derek, to where Derek’s arm was still wrapped around Stiles’ middle, and widened in understanding. “No, they shouldn’t.”

Stiles nodded in agreement, still smiling dopily. He could do about sixty hours without sleep before getting loopy, and he was at about sixty-five right now. He had been stressed out about the highly respected, very powerful southern California’s pack visit since long before their mage’s curse; the synapse spell was just the icing on a very tightly-wound cake. He thought about biting his tongue to prevent himself from saying anything else that he didn’t really want to, but was saved by his father leaning down to pick up the brown paper bag that had been by his feet.

“I know that your new earth-magic gig, uh, _thing_ means that you can’t really tolerate chemicals anymore, so I brought you something.” He reached into the bag and pulled out a round tupperware container of something dark brown. “Hospital pudding is chock full of preservatives, I’m sure, so I….” The sheriff shrugged and thrust the container at Stiles. “I made you some.”

Stiles’ eyes widened as he took in the container. He reached forward and brushed his hand against the plastic. It was cold, and Stiles imagined it sitting in the community fridge at the station, covered in yellow post-it’s declaring that it was ‘SHERIFF’S PROPERTY — DO NOT TOUCH’.

“Thanks, Dad,” Stiles choked out, giving his father a watery grin.

The sheriff coughed and took the pudding to set it on the tray next to Stiles’ bed. “Don’t thank me yet. It was a recipe on the internet. It got high ratings, but you know me and cooking…” He pulled out not one, but two spoons — obviously anticipating Derek’s presence at Stiles’ side — and the tears Stiles had been holding back finally managed to slip free.

“You could have killed him, right?” The sheriff asked, and Stiles gave a quick nod. “But you didn’t. Why? It would have been within your rights.”

Stiles raised his eyebrows and wiped his eyes clear with the back of his hand.

“Deaton’s been filling me in on the rights and responsibilities of pack mages,” his dad filled him. “You can’t blame me. I thought wizarding battles were something that happened only in Harry Potter, not on lacrosse fields in California high schools.”

Stiles snorted. “I could have killed him for insulting me and my pack, yes. Words are powerful things in the mouths of people who wield magic.  He wasn’t just insulting me. Us. He was trying to weaken us. I could have completely vaporized the vapid fucker.” He chucled. "That sounds poetic, doesn't it?"

“So why didn’t you? Kill him, I mean.”

Stiles sighed. “You really have to hate someone in order to kill them. It takes a lot of negative energy and dark intent. Like, serious, concentrated abhorrence. And you know what the thing about hate is? It doesn’t do a damn thing to the person it’s directed at. I mean, sure, having your molecules scattered to the far ends of the known universe is pretty final. But in death, Joey’s troubles would have been over. But for me? Hate is poison to whomever holds it in their soul. Acts committed in hate are never, in any way, good for the person who executes them.” He smiled tiredly at his dad. “It’s like Martin Luther King Jr. said. ‘I’ll stick to love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.’”

“So why did you curse him? In some ways that’s worse than killing him, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t curse him. I bound his magic. Made him normal.” Stiles shrugged. “I cauterized his ability to spread his poison.”

The sheriff nodded. “Good job, son. I’m proud of you.”

Stiles grinned. “Thanks, Dad.”

With one final nod, the sheriff stood and ruffled Stiles’ hair. “I’m going home for some sleep. See you tomorrow when you’re finally out of here?”

Stiles chuckled. “Don’t count on it. I’m going to crash at Derek's for at least twelve hours. How about dinner on Thursday? Obviously it will be my turn to bring dessert.”

“Sounds good, kid.”

 

~~~

 

When Derek woke up a couple hours later, Stiles had already made a sizeable dent in the pudding.

“What’s that?” Derek asked, an extremely sceptical expression directed at the pudding, as he sat upright next to Stiles.

“Pudding. My dad knows I can’t eat the processed fake-ingredients crap they serve here anymore, so he made me some.”

“Made it? From scratch? The same man who burns boiled eggs?”

Stiles made a shocked noise and waved the spoon around in indignation. Some of the chocolate pudding flew off to splat on the walls, but Stiles manfully ignored it in favor of defending his dad’s culinary honor. “It’s good!”

Derek gave him a deeply unimpressed look.

“No, really! Here, he even brought you your very own spoon.” Stiles handed over the extra utensil, and Derek’s expression softened. He dipped the tip into the tupperware container and licked off the miniscule bit that had managed to stick. Stiles grinned and punched the air in victory when Derek made a noise of approval and took another bite, this one normal-sized.

“I can’t believe I was out during his visit.”

“You were pretty upset. You needed to sleep it off.”

Derek nodded in agreement then took another bite of the pudding. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

“You know how other weres, from other packs that have come through, insult us by praising our ability to handle things given our 'odd little group'?” Stiles made a face. “‘ _I can’t believe such a ragtag little pack managed to take down a kanima_ ,’” he mocked. “‘ _Such good work for such a motley crew!_ ’”

Derek nodded again, a frown darkening his features.

“I hate it, you know? I mean, fuck them. We took out the kanima without killing the human. We decimated the Alpha pack and the demon wolf. We used the power of the nemeton and the eclipse to defeat a darach. We've beat flesh-eating unicorns, gargoyles, fairies, even a goddamn  _dragon_. We’re fucking awesome, you know? And all we get is crap.”

“But that’s nothing new,” Derek pointed out. “Even before I got back. You’ve been hearing those comments for almost a year now. What, you finally just snapped?”

Stiles shook his head. “Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

Stiles sighed and, careful not to dislodge any of his IVs, moved to sit between Derek’s legs, resting against his chest. “We’ve been together for months now. We practically live together.”

Derek hummed in agreement.

“Mages and werewolves having a relationship is generally frowned on, you know?”

“Yeah. So?”

“A mage and a were in a relationship is good ammunition for trying to undermine a pack’s authority. A mage and a were in a  _gay_  relationship?”

Derek stiffened.

“Exactly,” Stiles muttered. “I can handle comments of the ‘ragtag’ and ‘motley’ variety. I can even handle people making fun of me for being a hyperactive little shit.”

“Which he did.”

Stiles nodded. “But then he started in on the homophobic bullshit, and I just…”

Derek pulled Stiles close and kissed him gently on his temple. “I see.”

They were silent for awhile, taking turns eating the pudding and waiting for someone to walk in to tell Stiles he could go home. But long minutes later, just as Stiles started to feel his body slipping free of the sleeplessness curse, Derek spoke up.

“At least this sets an example,” he said, and Stiles grinned gleefully.

“Hate will not be tolerated.”

Derek reached over Stiles to set the pudding aside. He pulled Stiles down, and they settled comfortably into the bed again. Derek gave him a soft, but long, kiss. “Hate will  _not_  be tolerated.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published [on Tumblr](http://bootsnblossoms.tumblr.com/post/67524083422/pompt-fill-hate-will-not-be-tolerated) for [bagera69's](http://bagera69.tumblr.com/) prompt " _Pudding? *grins* Everything’s better with pudding_ ".


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